Good morning, I'm Taylor Wilson, and this is five things you need to know Saturday, the 9th of September, 2023.

Today, a special grand jury in Georgia has recommended criminal charges for people who weren't formally indicted in the election interference case.

Plus, another codependent loses his fight to move his case to federal court, and Democratic leaders point fingers on migrant issues.

A special Georgia grand jury that investigated former President Donald Trump recommended criminal charges for a number of others who were not involved in the formal indictment, including several of his Senate allies.

I spoke with USA today, Justice Department correspondent Bart Chanson for more.

Bart, welcome back to the show. Thanks for having me.

So the Georgia grand jury that investigated Donald Trump recommended criminal charges against a number of others who were not charged.

Bart, let's start with three of his Republican Senate allies. Who are we talking about here? And why might these recommendations have been made?

Three of the people who were named were Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican of South Carolina who, during the in 2020 campaign, was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

And then two Georgia senators, David Perdue and Kelly Laughler, they were running for re-election with Trump on the ballot, and they wound up losing their elections.

So their races were part of the stakes that Trump was pursuing in what he called election fraud in Georgia, and what the Georgia prosecutor, Fulton County District Attorney, Fannie Willis, has called election interference and racketeering.

And the grand jury also recommended charges for others who were not formally indicted. Bart, who are some of the others mentioned in this report, and why were they not included in the indictment itself?

What's good to remember would be this was a special grand jury they met during the second half of 2022, and basically they investigated a lot of the charges or a lot of the allegations that another grand jury wound up considering and actually voting on indictments.

This report from this special grand jury could not actually indict anyone, so this is an informational report, but after they investigated basically a lot of the same ground that the indictment covers, they recommended charges against 39 people.

Now as we know, the indictment covered 19 people, but they also acknowledged that eventually it's up to Fulton County District Attorney Fannie Willis to decide what she can win, what she thinks is worthy of bringing to court, actually filing charges on.

So for instance, the indictment that was filed has charges against three of the alternate electors from Georgia. These are Republicans who supported President Trump at the time despite the fact that President Joe Biden won the state.

And other 13 have not yet been charged, this special grand jury recommended charges against all 16 alternate electors, and we do not have an explanation from Willis yet about why she chose not to file charges against all 16.

The argument would be that they all filled out the paperwork, they all allegedly committed this fraudulent act of meeting and trying to cast their votes.

What also been reported is that at least eight of them have cooperated with the prosecution and may be eventually testifying against their peers.

And so part of the equation could be that while conducting the same activities, the prosecutor chose to use them as cooperating witnesses rather than pursue them as defendants.

Others who were named in the informational report from the special grand jury include campaign lawyers, Lynn Wood is a prominent lawyer, Clita Mitchell is a prominent long time Republican campaign lawyer, she participated in Trump's January 2, 2021 call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger when Trump asked for him to find 11,780 votes.

So he could win the state. Mitchell was one of the lawyers on that call and she got recommended for potential charges for that and for the organization of those alternate electors.

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